It is no secret that there is no love lost between factions of the warring Rinehart clan. But youngest daughter Ginia opted to end the year with a bang when she released private emails sent by her brother John to their mother in which he lamented she was a useless oxygen thief and had a brain like a weak bowl of porridge.

John Hancock, now 38, sent one of the emails nearly two years ago just days after the suppression order was lifted and the family’s mammoth dispute and dirty laundry was aired.

He told his mother Ginia, then 25, was “incompetent, craving attention and superficial” according to an affidavit tendered by her lawyer John Dalzell.

In another, he said Ginia could not help run the company because “you have spoiled her so much her brain has turned into a weak bowl of porridge”.

The bitter family dispute erupted days before Ginia was due to turn 25 and a $5 billion trust which was set up for the children by their grandfather Lang Hancock vest.

Ahead of Ginia’s birthday in September 2011 she told her children they would be bankrupted if the trust were allowed to vest, and secretly extended the vesting date. Her three eldest children – Hope, Bianca and John then sued alleging she had breached her duty as trustee and failed to act in their best interests. Hope later settled with her mother.

Running a campaign

Since the court case began there has been a stream of emails which show a fractured family in which each of the siblings have at one time or another been chosen as successor to their mother, only to be tossed to the side and replaced by another.

In one email tendered to the court and sent by John to his mother on June 11 he accused her of running a “campaign the whole way to keep me down, in and out of the business when you needed me but never to actually allow me to move forward with something real as it would take power and attention from you.”

He chastised his sister, calling her soft. “And why shouldn’t she be after how you have mollycoddled her!

“A Rolls at 25. Really mother, Silly on your and her fronts.”

He said his sister needed a “good few weeks with no free money and finding her own job – get out of those middle-aged Socialite clothes that cover her lack of earned self-esteem, and try and start learning how to run HPPL.

“She will have more than just me to battle against if you insist on unfair practices, and every chancer on the planet will know she is incompetent, craving attention and superficial – all easily supplied to the weak for a price.”

Critical of conduct

When extracts of the emails were released on Wednesday afternoon Mr Hancock admitted he had “criticised Ginia’s conduct, harshly, in private emails addressed to my Mother only”.

But he questioned why Ginia told her lawyers to release the emails and that the fact it had occurred confirmed his view that the two were working together behind the scenes.

“I have an especially dim view of her tactics against Bianca. Despite my private views of Ginia’s behaviour, I would never chose to make them public. Ginia has decided to do so.”

Another email tendered to the court said that “whoever the trustee, Ginia is the most intellectually disabled and influenced”. Another, after she had been photographed on a super yacht on Perth’s Swan river said “just tell Ginia to wear a bag over her head – cover up her genetic deficiencies from prying eyes.”